X-bit labs

Two for One: Nvidia's Dual-Chip GeForce 7950 GX2 Reviewed (page 15)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin , Anton Shilov

[ 06/09/2006 | 06:01 PM ]

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

We don’t test this game with turned-on full-screen antialiasing because GeForce 6/7 based graphics cards do not support HDR alongside with FSAA whereas the game looks better with enabled HDR than without it.

Neither card can show its best in 1024x768 as they are all limited by the CPU performance. But beginning from 1280x1024 it is clear that the min frame rate of the GeForce 7950 GX2 is higher than that of the other cards or SLI configurations from Nvidia and is almost the same as the min frame rate of the single Radeon X1900 XTX. All other factors being the same, graphics cards with a high minimum fps ensure a higher comfort in this game, and the GeForce 7950 GX2 has something to be proud of. It is one of the best solutions available (the other one is Radeon X1900 XTX) to play TES IV: Oblivion .

In the open scenes of TES IV the GeForce 7950 GX2 feels the lack of memory bandwidth, especially in high resolutions. However, the new card is strong enough to keep the frame rate at 48fps even in 1280x1024. This is good considering the graphical complexity of this game.

This result, especially the minimum frame rate, is comparable with that of the Radeon X1900 XTX and GeForce 7900 GT SLI. The min frame rate parameter is sometimes even more important than the average performance of a card. For example, the speed of the GeForce 7900 GTX may bottom out to 15fps and this is the point where the game doesn’t run smoothly anymore. Such slowdowns are quite dangerous in combats when you want accurate control over the character in the presence of enemies. And it is in combat scenes that slowdowns are most likely to occur because the enemy models will have to be rendered in the frame.

This game is tested manually with the Fraps utility, so the numbers may be somewhat imprecise (particularly, we are not very sure about the low min speed of the Radeon X1900 XT CrossFire in 1600x1200).